Category: News

Today you may have read that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged investors to “Please reduce your investments in the coal- and fossil fuel-based economy and [move] to renewable energy.”

You and almost 10,000 other Australians — as well as dozens of investors and business people, including former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser — are way ahead of the curve, adding your names to an open letter supporting the Australian National University’s socially responsible divestment decisions a few weeks ago.

We could only fit a fraction of the names into the letters published in the Canberra Times and Australian Financial Review, so we printed copy of the open letter with every signatory’s name attached and hand delivered all 71 double-sided pages to the Vice-Chancellor’s office.

In response, we received this letter from ANU Vice Chancellor Ian Young:

Dear Dr Denniss,I write today to thank you for your support over recent weeks of The Australian National University (ANU) and the decision by the University Council to realign the University’s investments in line with our social responsible investment policy. The community reaction and volume of messages was unexpected.

Although ANU has been attacked for its decisions, we are simply part of a much bigger debate about carbon and carbon pricing.

My own views are that the world will gradually move away from the use of fossil fuels. This, however, will take decades. In the meantime we will require such fuels.

The real debate in climate should be about producing cost-effective alternative energy. Here, there are great opportunities for Australia. Australia should not just be an adopter of alternative energy, we should be a producer. Universities like the ANU should be the powerhouses to produce the new technologies of the future.

If ANU has pushed this debate a small way in this direction we will have acted exactly as a leading Australian, and world, university should.

Please pass on my thanks to all who signed the petition and encourage them to remain engaged with ANU into the future.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Ian Young AO
Vice-Chancellor and President

In the last few weeks your support has helped shift the debate away from attacks on ANU’s right to divest and refocused the debate where it should be: Australia’s growing fossil fuel divestment movement and the financial risks of the carbon bubble.

Our research shows that one  in four  Australians with super would prefer their retirement savings not be invested in fossil fuels. That’s around $250 billion worth of consumer sentiment. It also shows that investments in coal, oil and gas increase financial risk without increasing returns over a full business cycle.

Thank you again to everyone who added their name to the open letter, and to the hundreds who chipped in to get the open letter published in the Australian Financial Review.

Yours sincerely,

The Australia Institute Team

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